If you've always wondered what you should do when you encounter a dead cow on your property, Chris Cooley has the answer for you. You burn it. Then, apparently, you gleefully post manic pictures of the pyre on your blog.
So how does a Skins tight end come to encounter a burning cow? It, as these things tend to do, starts with a road trip. The Coolster and his ex-cheerleader wife headed out to Wyoming to get their inner cowboy on.
Apparently Cooley has a new homestead in the vast nothingness of Wyoming. While exploring the land in the manner of famous Land Barons like Brett Favre, he stumbled across a dead cow.
Quite a conundrum. What do you do with a dead cow in the middle of nowhere? You don't butcher it. You certainly don't spend four hours digging a giant hole. You could call the local rendering plant, perhaps.
Or you could do what a bunch of other ranchers do: Flame it up.
Burning it helps prevent disease -- 'cause certainly 1,200 pounds of rotting beef is quite a germ factory. Cooley got a comment on his facebook from someone defending him:
"As the Director for adoptions for a rescue, an animal rights activist, a Vet Tech and a member of the HSUS this is not an act of cruelty. It all rights burning the corpse of a dead farm animal is the right thing to do to stop the spread of disease. As an animal lover yes it is hard to see it but it was the right thing to do to save the other animals around."
So there. He was probably doing the right thing.
But posting it on the blog? With the Mike Vick tempest? Celebrating it publicly? Maybe that's not so smart.
Better or worse than pics of his junk? You decide.
Chris Needham used to write Capitol Punishment. He sort of misses the smell of cow manure.